McPherson's Ridge: The First Battle for the High Ground July 1, 1863

By Steven H. Newton

Gunfire broke the morning silence on 1 July 1863, as Confederate General Henry Heth pushed his division down Chambersburg Pike toward Gettysburg. In the Civil War's most important battle, the early contest for McPherson's Ridge just outside of Gettysburg is considered by many to be the battle's most crucial stage.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Dec 31, 1990
• ISBN: 9781473816275

Book preview

BATTLEGROUND AMERICA

McPHERSON’S RIDGE

BATTLEGROUND AMERICA GUIDES offer a unique approach to the battles and battlefields of America. Each book in the series highlights a small American battlefield—sometimes a small portion of a much larger battlefield. All of the units, important individuals, and actions of each engagement on the battlefield are described in a clear and concise narrative. Detailed maps complement the text and illustrate small unit action at each stage of the battle. Historical images and modern-day photographs tie the dramatic events of the past to today’s battlefield site and highlight the importance of terrain in battle. The present-day battlefield is described in detail with suggestions for touring the site.

BATTLEGROUND AMERICA

McPHERSON’S

RIDGE

Steven H. Newton

LEO COOPER

Maps on pages 80 and 94 originally appeared in Stone’s Brigade and the Fight for

the McPherson Farm, Combined Publishing/Da Capo Press.

Map on Page 10 originally appeared in The Gettysburg Campaign, Combined

Publishing/Da Capo Press.

Published under license in Great Britain by

LEO COOPER

an imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Limited

47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire S70 2AS

ISBN 0 85052 952 2

A CIP catalogue of this book is available

from the British Library

For up-to-date information on other titles produced under the

Leo Cooper imprint, please telephone or write to:

Pen & Sword Books Ltd, FREEPOST, 47 Church Street,

Barnsley, South Yorkshire S70 2AS

Telephone [phone]

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1   They’ll Come Early in the Morning

Chapter 2   The Object Being to Feel the Enemy

Chapter 3   Tell the General That We Will Hold

Chapter 4   Balls Whistled Round Our Heads Like Hail

Chapter 5   As Only Brave Men Can Fight

Chapter 6   It Was the Intention to Defend the Place

Chapter 7   Sprayed by the Brains of the First Rank

Chapter 8   A Furious Musketry Fire

Chapter 9   Not A Shadow of A Chance

Touring the Battlefield

Index

INTRODUCTION

The map is not the terrain.

Absent real combat experience, the ridges and ravines of Fort A. P. Hill, just south of the Rappahannock River, taught me that lesson over and over again as a platoon sergeant attempting to maneuver vehicles and troops through simulated battles. Further south, near Blackstone, Virginia, Fort Pickett reinforced the learning curve. In the 1990s we used topographical maps that still showed a World War II-era hospital complex below the main cantonment area, even though the buildings were long gone, the concrete slabs almost entirely covered with tangled undergrowth, and the neatly patterned streets had long since been submerged somewhere beneath tree roots. It was a great place to send brand-new lieutenants with a compass and a map.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century American soldiers employ compasses, computer-generated topographic maps, and global positioning satellites to assist our troops in figuring out where they are, what’s over the next ridge, where the enemy might be hiding, and the proper coordinates to call for artillery fire. Even so, with all the high-tech marvels, each generation of fighters has to relearn that essential lesson: the map is not the terrain.

I can still remember one young squad leader, standing adamantly with her feet spread apart and her hands on her hips in the middle of a five-road intersection. The map told her that the intersection had four roads (and a building on one corner), and was located about two hundred meters over there. Her GPS system (after it finally located sufficient satellites to express an opinion) archly informed her that she was really standing forty meters north of the intersection, on the ridgeline I could see over her shoulder. Her squad (many of whom had more years time in the service than she did) had taken an impromptu break while she considered the evidence. Eventually, she looked at me, and said, Damn it, Sergeant, according to the map and the GPS, this intersection isn’t here! I asked her which one she thought was more likely to be correct, the map, the satellite, or the pavement beneath her feet.

Civil War soldiers, from privates to commanding generals, had to learn about maps and terrain the hard way: quickly, while other people died. Major General George McClellan predicated his entire plan to advance up the James-York peninsula from Fortress Monroe to Richmond on the information he saw on a map that depicted the main road running parallel to the Warwick River rather than across it. At Chancellorsville, Lieutenant General Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson launched the attack that defeated the Army of the Potomac by leading his entire corps through the Wilderness on a road that did not appear on Federal maps. But most flank marches ended quite differently, as guides somehow failed to know their home counties and officers led their men down the wrong trails.

Part of the confusion stemmed from map-making conventions of the period. Instead of the neat contour lines delineating the slope and shape of hillsides, nineteenth-century cartographers more often used what could be called the fuzzy caterpillar approach to drawing mountains, hills, and ridges. When well executed, such maps could give an excellent overall feel for the terrain, and are in fact often easier to use for three-dimensional visualization than modern topographic conventions. But those maps never satisfactorily answered questions like Where’s the highest point on this ridge? or Exactly which of these furry little brush strokes does the colonel want me to occupy, and how do I find it?

At Gettysburg, for all three days of America’s most celebrated battle, the terrain played an exceptionally critical role in determining the course of the fighting and the ultimate outcome of the battle. General Robert E. Lee, Major General George G. Meade, and their senior officers based their plans on what maps, reports from staff officers, and the view through their own field glasses could tell them. Those plans were conveyed to the colonels commanding regiments and the captains leading companies, most of whom would fight the entire battle without ever seeing a map of the relevant Pennsylvania countryside. They nonetheless had to take their commanders’ often second-or third-hand understanding of the terrain and work it out on the ground while other people were shooting at them. The resulting struggles for the Round Tops, Cemetery Hill, Culp’s Hill, and Cemetery Ridge decided the battle.

Yet there might not have been a battle at all, at least not at Gettysburg, if not for McPherson’s Ridge.

CHAPTER 1

THEY’LL COME EARLY IN THE MORNING

FAR FEWER THAN HALF OF THE VISITORS to Gettysburg who take the self-guided tour elect to take the short drive northwest of town to visit McPherson’s Ridge. Those who do make the right turn off Route 116—the old Hagerstown Pike—and spend a few minutes on what is known today as Reynolds Avenue. In the summer heat many do not even get out of their cars, while others stop and photograph a few monuments (often with their children standing on the bases) before driving around the circle made by Buford and Doubleday Avenues that takes them past Oak Hill and the Eternal Light Peace Memorial. A few intrepid souls dismount their vehicles long enough to scamper down and examine the railroad cut, but it is possible to pass an entire afternoon without seeing more than one or two figures actually looking out across McPherson’s Ridge as the cavalry and artillerymen would have done on the morning of July 1, 1863; nor does anyone usually glance over his or her shoulder and realize just how close the Gettysburg Seminary and the town itself stands to their position. Instead, most visitors make short work of McPherson’s Ridge and the first day’s fight before navigating back across their folded maps to more famous places: Devil’s Den, Little Round Top, Cemetery Ridge….

The problem is not one of callousness or apathy, but terrain. Driving down Reynolds Avenue, McPherson’s could be any one of thousands of gently rolling ridges that cut across the farms and fields of central Pennsylvania, and Willoughby Run appears to be an inconsequential trickle. Appreciating the significance of McPherson’s Ridge and the action fought for its possession that steamy July day requires a soldier’s view of the land around Gettysburg.

And the soldier’s view is not that of the commanding generals. A single glance at the map revealed Gettysburg as a critical strategic point for defeating the Confederate invasion of Pennsylvania. Before his relief as commander of the Army of the Potomac, Major General Joseph Hooker had based his operational plan in part on controlling the junction of the ten major roads passing through the town. His successor, Major General George G. Meade—a Pennsylvanian—knew the area as